Lawmaking - Proposed or implemented laws and representatives that affect the internet in any significant manner.

The Beginning

The WELL - The ideas we hold true in our forums and social networks started here in this groundbreaking BBS.

USENET - A special university-based BBS that had the option to be pseudo-anonymous. This place oversaw the cultivation of the Free Software movement, which ended up turning the GNU Project, now made complete with Linux, into a tangible product.

Anonymous Imageboards

Anonymous Imageboards are a strange, but culturally important anomaly in internet history.

Forerunners

Ayashii World - needs translation The first anonymous textboard ever made on the internet, which bore a large community known as Nanashi World. 4chan and Anonymous draw strong parallels to it’s community, and it is actually a direct descendant, at least when it comes to the code.

2channel - The largest textboard ever built on the internet, larger than 2chan and 4chan combined. It is nearly equal to the media in cultural importance.

2ch History Timeline - needs translation A complete timeline of 2channel history. It’s from the Japanese Wikipedia, and needs to be translated to English.

world2ch - An attempt to bring the concept of anonymous textboard beyond Japan. It was a world where Japanese and English-speakers alike mingled together for the first, and last time.

Futaba Channel - An anonymous imageboard designed as the successor to 2channel. 4chan’s codebase was directly descended from this site.

Something Awful - The site that gave 4chan it’s community and culture should not itself be forgotten. These articles will unlock the paywall and allow us to understand what happened and what resided here, and how it fell into irrelevance later on.

4chan

4chan Chronicle - The epic story of one of the most interesting(ly controversial) communities ever to exist on the Internet.

8chan

8chan Chronicle - The story of 8chan, a chan of epic men too edgy for 4chan.